TVSquad

Oh, the humanity! Wheel of Fortune is not all frivolity and fun. Merv Griffin knew what he was doing when he created this venerable game show. Drama, ensues! You think it's so easy spinning the wheel, buying a vowel, laughing at Pat Sajak's jokes and ogling Vanna's gorgeous gait? Well, it's not. Under all that pressure you'd be surprised -- or maybe you wouldn't -- to see how some people simply come up short in the solution department. The letters all float together and instead of spelling a word you know as well as your own name, you pick the wrong consonant and you're WAH-WAHed in shame and regret. The fortune goes to the next player and you're left with egg on your face.

Watch these great examples and you'll see what I mean (a sample is after the jump). Like Jay Leno's simple "man in the street" questions about common knowledge, you see that there's no telling how stupid people can be, especially with a camera and microphone in their face.

[via digg]

A few words to describe the celebrity version of NBC's The Apprentice: drama, tempers, egos, backstabbing, bitching, arguing, egos and... more egos! This week, the bruised egos are those of America's Got Talent's Piers Morgan and of The Apprentice (Season 1) Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth. Since the beginning of the season, both have been strong and opinionated players on their respective teams. Even if they didn't have to work together, Piers and Omarosa were pretty vocal about what they thought of each other. This week, hell broke lose when Trump decided to mix up the teams and the enemies ended up, you guessed it, on the same team!

With the TV season getting back to business as usual, a few Lost stars have been making the rounds in the media this week. Earlier, E!'s Kristin Dos Santos interviewed Jeff Fahey, who plays pilot Frank Lapidus on the show. Frank is my favorite new Lost character, and Fahey is very intriguing and well-spoken in person. The actor discusses his reasons for joining the show and admits that he had never watched Lost before joining the cast.

Evangeline Lilly was a guest on Tuesday night's episode of the Late Show with David Letterman. The actress tells Dave about how a planned trip to China became an impromptu trip to Japan (no visitor's visa). She also talks about the writers' strike and how she deals with island fever during filming in Hawaii.

Both videos are available after the jump. Enjoy!

I've been a fan of Dexter since its premiere two years ago, and it's yet to disappoint. When word came that CBS would be airing (at least) the show's first season, I had mixed feelings. I was glad to see the show get more exposure, and seeing that Showtime/CBS has such faith in the series shows promise that we'll see many more seasons of this series to come. However, I'm somewhat afraid that its success on CBS might remove the show from Showtime, meaning an overly-edited and watered-down version of the show.

Recently I got to take a look at a screener of the pilot that will be airing on CBS (this coming Sunday), and to put my fears to rest, I played my season one DVD in my laptop as the screener played on my TV, both synced to the same moments.

One of my regular blog haunts is the game show news site BuzzerBlog, and when I logged into it today and saw this post, I couldn't believe my eyes: FOX and Fremantle Media are apparently putting together an American version of the popular Japanese game show Hole in the Wall. I was so flabbergasted that I had to see who else reported on it; sure enough, it was right there in Variety for all to see.

If you're not sure what Hole in the Wall is, take a look at the video after the jump. Basically, it's a game of human Tetris: contestants have to bend themselves into the shape of a cutout on a fast-approaching wall. If they do it in time, they go through the wall. If they don't, the wall pushes them into a pool of water. That's it. That's the whole game.

Apologies for my lateness, dear readers, for I am recovering from an epic (and somewhat embarrassing) adventure to the Colbert Report studio for a taping. Expect a lengthy post about that soon, but enjoy this for now.

First up, a double dose of happy news! The Daily Show script supervisor, Kira, got engaged. Hurrahs all around! The writers' strike is (tentatively) over. More hurrahs all around! Writers for both TDS and The Colbert Report are expected to return Wednesday, which is spectacular news. As much as I have loved the wackiness of the past few weeks, I know the writers' return will be a huge load off the shoulders of both Jon and Stephen and all of their show staff.

A new column here at TV Squad, where we talk about all of the things you're missing when you hit fast forward on your DVRs.

This week, I'd like to talk to you about Cheerios.

Specifically, I'd like to talk to you about the Cheerios commercial that has been running for several months. You know it. It's the one where the dad is going to eat Cheerios for six weeks to lower his cholesterol and his son has six weeks to do a report on Shakespeare. I have a question about this particular ad, which seems to be on 33 times a day right now.

Does the dad hate his son?

According to various sources such as Kristin Dos Santos from E!, Ain't It Cool News and Michael Ausiello, it is more than likely that we will get no new episodes of NBC's Heroes this spring. Even if most series will return this spring with a few new episodes, it looks like NBC decided to have the cast and crew start shooting Season 3 instead of offering fans a few more episodes for the second season.

MSNBC correspondent and anchor David Shuster finds himself in not one but two controversies today.

First, while filling in for Tucker Carlson yesterday, Shuster made the comment "Doesn't it seem like Chelsea's sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?" referring to Chelsea Clinton's campaigning for her mother Hillary and making phone calls to superdelegates and The View. Well, Democratic officials (and MSNBC execs) aren't happy with the remark, and have threatened to pull out of the February 26 MSNBC debate. Shuster apologized this morning and also plans to go back on Carlson's show today to apologize again. (Update: Shuster has been suspended for his comment!)

But that's not the only controversy Shuster is in the middle of this week...

Even if you don't watch The Celebrity Apprentice, it's pretty much a given that you watched this week's preview (after the jump) during which we see Stephen Baldwin tell Donald Trump that he can't continue working with Piers Morgan.

Let's face it, Baldwin and the America's Got Talent judge have not been seeing eye to eye from the very beginning of the show. Even if they somewhat worked well together on the tasks, their business relationship was pretty much a hate-hate one or at least a "I'm tolerating you because I have to." But in light of the Vincent Pastore fiasco from last week, Baldwin has had enough and may give The Donald his resignation... or will he?

We all love a good Sawyer nickname, don't we? Thanks to ABC, you can now be like Freckles, Hoss, and Zeke and get your own nickname from James Ford. Among the newest features on ABC's Lost page is Sawyer's nickname generator. All you have to do is provide basic information about yourself--name, body type, etc.--and the the generator gives you a new handle.

In his infinite wisdom, Sawyer gave me the nickname Hawking. Not to worry: if you don't like your nickname, you can enter the same information and get a new one. My second and third nicknames were Grasshopper and Skeletor. I guess I should have stuck with Hawking. Just for fun, check out an old video homage to Sawyer's nicknames after the jump.

[via Pop Candy]

As most late night TV lovers know, Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have developed a feud over who is responsible for Mike Huckabee's popularity in the presidential race. It's been a long, involved story, with each guy claiming that they "made" Huckabee and bashing each other back on forth. Well, Monday night was truly spectacular, because the world got to see the feud reach its climax, in the form of a conflict that crossed over The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Late Night. With the three hosts appearing on each others' shows all on one night, it was special appearances galore. It became a clash of the Titans, a battle of epic proportions, a heaping helping of Monday fanservice --

Goodness, for a minute there, I lost myself. Should I be worried by how overjoyed I was (and kind of still am)?

So, we've got this promotional thing going on with this new zero calorie sparkling drink from Pepsi called Tava. Haven't heard of it yet? Well, from what I can tell, you certainly will. What did they give us to give away? How does this sound:

• Two (2) 80GB iPod Classics.
  
• Five (5) swag bags containing TAVA Canvas tote bag, TAVA t-shirt and TAVA pen.
• Seven (7) sample packs of TAVA.

What do you need to do? Well, to accompany this post I'm listing a bunch of memorable fictional drinks from TV. All you need to do is list your favorite, either from this list or one I missed. More details on the giveaway are at the end of this post, after the jump.

If you were asked "Who is Penn Badgley?," you would probably say something like "Isn't he the guy from Gossip Girl?" Yes, he is. Others would probably answer with "The curly haired cutie from The Mountain?" Again, correct. But what did he do before that? Silence would probably be the most popular answer since it seemed as if he first made his mark during the canceled-rather-fast WB's The Mountain. But what may surprise most is that Penn Badgley has been in the business for almost 10 years!

Never mind what Paula Abdul is going to do at today's Super Bowl, this is more entertaining.

It's a scene from the 1978 film Junior High School, and yes, that is American Idol judge Paula Abdul "singing" the tune (I don't think Simon would give her a "yes"), which is probably called "We're Gonna Have A Party" or something similar. The clip is fascinating, on so many levels. It's like a local cable version of Degrassi Junior High. The IMDb tells us that it was filmed at Van Nuys High and featured "non-professionals and actual students," though that's very obvious when you see the clip.

I particularly like the hair and clothes on everyone (the '70s were a very odd time, people). I'm also fascinated by the shifts in tone in the clip. It starts out like a low budget High School Musical, then it shifts in Degrassi territory, and then it goes into the girl's bathroom and turns into a film noir, complete with sax music.

And I really don't want to know what Keith has in that briefcase.